The President Is Missing(35)

“Go with the agents now,” I whisper. “Will you?”

She pulls back from me, wipes the tears off her cheeks, takes a breath, looks at me with hopeful eyes, and nods.

Then she lunges toward me, throwing her arms around me again.

I squeeze my eyes shut, hold her trembling body. Suddenly my grown daughter is fifteen years younger, a grade-schooler who needs her daddy, a father who is supposed to be her rock, who will never let her down.

I wish I could hold her, wipe away her tears, allay her every concern. I had to teach myself, long ago, that I couldn’t follow my baby girl around and make sure the world was kind to her. And now I have to pry myself loose and get on with the business at hand when I’d like nothing more than to hold her and never let go.

I cup my hands around her face, my daughter’s swollen, hopeful eyes looking up at me.

“I love you more than anything in the world,” I say. “And I promise I will come back to you.”





Chapter

21



After Lilly leaves the bar with the Secret Service agents, I ask the bartender for a glass of water. I reach into my pocket and take out my pills, the steroids that will boost my platelet count. I hate these pills. They mess up my head. But I either operate with a fuzzy brain or I’m out of commission altogether. There’s no in-between. And the latter is not an option.

I walk back to my car. The clouds are as bruised as the backs of my legs. No rain has fallen, but the smell of it is in the air.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and call Dr. Lane as I walk. She won’t recognize this phone number, but she answers anyway.

“Dr. Lane, it’s Jon Duncan.”

“Mr. President? I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon.”

“I know. I’ve been busy.”

“Your count is continuing to drop. You’re under sixteen thousand.”

“Okay, I’m doubling up on the steroids, like I promised.”

“It’s not enough. You need immediate treatment.”

I almost walk into oncoming traffic, not paying attention as I step into a crosswalk. An SUV driver lays on the horn, in case I hadn’t noticed my mistake.

“I’m not at ten thousand yet,” I say to Dr. Lane.

“That’s a guideline. Everyone is different. You could be suffering internal bleeding as we speak.”

“But that’s unlikely,” I say. “The MRI was negative yesterday.”

“Yesterday, yes. Today? Who knows?”

I reach the lot where my car is parked. I hand over my ticket and cash, and the attendant hands me the keys.

“Mr. President, you’re surrounded by talented and capable people. I’m sure they could keep on top of things for a few hours while you take a treatment. I thought presidents delegated.”

They do. Most of the time. But this I can’t delegate. And I can’t tell her, or anyone else, why.

“I hear everything you’re saying, Deborah. I have to go now. Keep your phone handy.”

I punch out the phone, start up the car, and drive through thick traffic. Thinking about the girl in the Princeton T-shirt—Nina to my daughter.

Thinking about “Dark Ages.”

Thinking about my next meeting tonight, threats I can issue, offers I can make.

A man holding a white sign that says PARKING waves me into a lot. I pay money and follow another man’s directions to a spot. I keep my keys and walk for two blocks until I stop in front of a medium-rise apartment building bearing the name CAMDEN SOUTH CAPITOL over the entrance. Across the street, there is a roar from the crowd.

I cross the boulevard, no easy task with the traffic. A man passes me saying, “Who needs two? Who needs two?”

I remove the envelope Nina gave me and pull out the single colorful ticket to tonight’s game, the Nationals versus the Mets.

At the left-field gate of Nationals Park, attendants are processing people through a metal detector, wanding people who don’t pass the test, checking bags for weapons. I wait my place in line, but it’s a short wait. The game has already started.

My seat is in section 104, nosebleed seats. I’m accustomed to the best seats in the house, a skybox or behind home plate or right off the dugout on the third-base line. But I like this better, here in the left-field stands. My view isn’t the greatest, but it feels more real.

I look around, but there’s no point. It will happen when it happens. My job is to sit here and wait.

Ordinarily I’d be like a kid in a candy store here. I’d grab a Budweiser and a hot dog. You can shelve all those microbrews: at a ball game, there is no finer beverage than an ice-cold Bud. And no food ever tasted so good as a dog with mustard at a ball game, not even my mama’s rib tips with vinegar sauce.

I’d kick back and remember those days hurling fastballs at UNC, dreams of a pro career when the Royals drafted me in the fourth round, my year in Double A with the Memphis Chicks, sweating on buses, icing my elbow at night in dive motels, playing before crowds numbering only in the hundreds, eating Big Macs and dipping Copenhagen.

But no beer for me tonight. My stomach is already in turmoil as I wait for my visitor, the Princeton girl’s partner.

My phone vibrates in the pocket of my jeans. The caller ID on the screen reads C Brock. Carolyn texts a single number: 3. I type back Wellman and hit Send.